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Why would the county want to be combined with the City? And considering the county is already subdivided into how many separate incorporated cities why in the world would they want to be combined with Cincinnati? Just where is the incentive? Let's all jump up and become part of the City so we can be reduced to its level of incompetency. Maybe we can drive population out to the adjacent counties at the same rate. I can just see Mariemont, Terrace Park, Madeira, Indian Hill, Montgomery, Blue Ash, Evandale, Wyoming, even St Bernard and Norwood just champing at the bit for the chance.

Consolidation of services? Just try and get them all to agree on one basic service - trash collection through a common contract. Once I see that happen I may hold out a candle for the rest of the blue-sky concepts. If you can't agree on such a basic service as that, what hope is there for anything else?

Half the people don't pay income taxes today and the income, purchasing power, and taxing potential of professional class people are 3 or 4 times that of middle class households due to the growing inequality. Follow the people with the money to see where the economic power is going. Half the population in the U.S. today costs local govn't more in services than they bring in through local taxes. Cincinnati isn't going after them, because they are a losing proposition. As the population of cincinnati declines, the average income and education level is going up. 15% increases in average income in cincinnati since 2000 while overall u.s. incomes are down almost 5% over the same period. It is just a matter of how aggresively this process can be pushed.

I know how you feel sarah. Business are looking to locate in a metro where they can get the greatest possible access to talent and services at a given cost of operation (salaries, taxes, property price, etc.). If they locate in a city with many underperforming areas they are stuck with a share of those costs of maintaining those areas through taxes, but cannot gain anything of value from being in that given metro. That is why downtowns exist in particular and cities exist at all. If metro economies didn't matter, economic activity would be evenly distributed across the globe and cities wouldn't exist. Cities are not some anachronistic heritage that we keep going out of some sense of tradition. Cities pay the bills. Its just that people want their piece of the action without paying their share of the costs. Its understandable, but unsustainable.

>In a City which not too long ago had 500,000 population but has recently fell below 300,000,

Come on. 50,000 residents, or 1/10th of Cincinnati's residents, were lost to the Queensgate development and I-75. So residential property in the basin became light industrial and an interstate highway that pays no property tax (unlike the enormous railroad yard it parallels). Then tens of thousands more homes and apartments have been demolished for expansions of the University of Cincinnati, the various hospitals, and innumerable road widenings. So to summarize, since 1950 much of the City of Cincinnati -- hundreds of acres, if not thousands -- have been transformed from residential to commercial, light industrial, or roads (to the suburbs).

In fact, Cincinnati no doubt has tens of thousands more jobs within its borders than it had when the population was 500,000. This is because many of those 500,000 were unemployed housewives and the children they raised which leads us to...

...the most important demographic events of the 20th century, the appearance of oral contraceptives, then the legalization of abortion in 1973. Every city's population started diving after 1970 thanks to the dramatically lower birthrate -- often as much or more than 25% lower.

You can pretend all you want that 200,000 people moved away from Cincinnati voluntarily, but I have just laid out irrefutable facts that spoil most popular assumptions.

It takes two, or thirty nine, to tango. You can't isolate and hold blameless one local govn't without implicating its neighbors. No gov't or person is blameless in cincinnati's regional economic and political circumstances.

I purpose this question to all suburbanites .Hypothetically speaking if all the municipalities in the county agreed to share a diverse array of services at a substantial cost savings would your be in favor of a government merger?

I purpose this question to all suburbanites .Hypothetically speaking if all the municipalities in the county agreed to share a diverse array of services at a substantial cost savings would your be in favor of a government merger?

Interesting question, though one I do not see happening. Taking a clue from our Federal Government, I would have to say no. The shared services would not last long. Big government just tends to get bigger. More and more reasons are created for new departments, etc. As it grows one hand does not know what the other hand is doing. Our state governments are already good examples of this.

And if we permit it the cities would not be far behind. We need more efficiency, not more public sector jobs. The computer servers they now have to hold all of the emails, inter-department correspondence, can already overwhelm the Library of Congress. What we need is more work, more responsibility, and less pass the buck to the next department.

I lived in Lexington before, during and after the city/county merger. I can't recall any negatives associated with it, although there was a bit of discomfort at the time as jobs and departments were eliminated along with duplication. I credit the merged government to what is in most respects a very well run, well managed and economical local government today. One hears similar positives in Indianapolis. That said, the Lexington situation was as different as daylight and dark from Hamilton County, given that the only things that had to merge were the city, county and as I recall one or two tiny towns in outlying parts of the county.

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